Customer Reviews

Lessons from a Broken Chopstick

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Memories of foreign places and trusted adults substituting for parents, reflections on a father whose call to preach the Gospel superceded all other priorities--this is a memoir from a missionary kid who recognizes the unique opportunities and disadvantages of that particular background and reflects on her journey to understanding with insight, humor, and, most of all, grace.

I always thought we were supposed to revere the missionary kids they had a special life. The sacrifice they were forced to endure away from their family was a picture of their life I never understood before. Well written book.

This insightful book describes the unusual life of a daughter born in the 1940's to American missionary parents in China. In addition to providing fascinating details of her highly unconventional childhood and young adulthood, the author courageously explores the motives of her demanding father and describes how she eventually learns forgiveness and finds peace, following years of neglect and abuse, meted out in the name of religion. In addition to its autobiographical elements and details of an exotic life, the book provides an honest assessment of the challenges and sacrifices required of missionaries and their families and how sometimes the best intentions are thwarted by uncompromising belief and misplaced ego. This book tells a story that needs telling, both for lay people and those in the missionary world. Reading it makes one eagerly await the author's next work.

I must admit: I have known the author since the 1960's when we were at Columbia University in Nursing School. I had learned bits and pieces of the story which she unfolds for us in the book. Now I see more of the whole story and am amazed by her eloquent and flowing prose. I found it a "page turner," that I could not put down.
I was hoping to hear even more about her life as a missionary kid in her "retro" high school, and to read about college and nursing school. Well, after all, it is written as a memoir of childhood and the rigidity of her missionary father.

This is a memoir that was written with great integrity, and one that missionary kids should read of any age. I'm a grateful family member to be able to read this.